


lie close

by venndaai



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 03:06:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17779415
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/pseuds/venndaai
Summary: The night after the Battle of Helm's Deep.





	lie close

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phraseme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phraseme/gifts).



 

“Yes,” Gandalf said. “But now, I think, it is time the lot of you were off to bed. Gimli is swaying on his stout Dwarven feet. It has been a very long day and a half, and your friends will need you rested and sharp-minded on the morrow.”

Gimli bristled at the wizard's words. He was not swaying. And if Aragorn was not swaying himself, it was only because the Man was leaning heavily on the oak table, blinking and looking at nothing. Gimli opened his mouth to point this out, and then it occurred to him that Gandalf might be trying to save the Man's delicate ego. Gimli snorted. Mahal save them from the pride of kings. Well, if playing along got Aragorn to rest when he needed to, Gimli could make the sacrifice. And it was true that the Three Hunters' presence wouldn't really be needed until Theoden awoke and summoned his council.

He waved an arm at Gandalf, and turned to take a step towards the doorway that he thought lead back to their assigned sleeping quarters. The ground tilted as a wave of dizziness hit him.

Then Legolas's hand was at his elbow, steadying him. “Yes, to bed,” Legolas said cheerfully. “Come along, Aragorn.” He looked down at Gimli. “Lead the way. You remember all these tunnels best.”

Gimli was sure Gandalf's eyes were twinkling in his little wizard-laugh way, but he didn't turn to see, just focused on one step after another. He couldn't remember ever being this tired. Even during their running- then, there had always been their desperate pace and the everpresent danger of enemies keeping tension humming in his mind. But today there had been long hard battle, and then the miles of caverns underground, and now a temporary respite. When they reached the small yet luxuriously decorated room that Theoden's people had given them, Gimli stumbled to the edge of his bed and collapsed onto it. It was rude of him to lie down on a fine guest bed without changing his clothes, he knew, and foolish not to take advantage of the rare opportunity to go through his proper evening hygiene rituals, but at the moment he didn't care.

Aragorn's bed creaked as the Man sat down on it. Gimli closed his eyes and pressed his dizzy, aching head against the soft cloth beneath him.

There was a light sigh from up above, and then Legolas threw himself down on Gimli's bed, and lay there next to him. Gimli knew this even though his eyes were still closed and Legolas had made hardly any sound, landing light as a feather. But Gimli could feel him, lying on his back, not quite touching Gimli at any point. The bed was made for an average adult Man. It was ridiculously large for Gimli. Probably Legolas's toes stuck out over the edge slightly.

Gimli opened his eyes and stared at the rock ceiling, barely illuminated by the low fire in the hearth. Just looking at that gray stone, he could almost imagine he was home in the Blue Mountains. He could pretend he was back in his family's halls, and that there was not an elf lying next to him.

“You have your own bed, elf,” he managed to say.

He didn’t know what he expected to happen next. He had consistently failed to predict Legolas, and he failed, once again, to predict this: the elf rolled over, and draped an arm across Gimli’s chest.

Gimli could hear the thudding of his own heart in his ears. He could push the arm off, push Legolas off the bed, make a friendly joke, go to sleep. He needed to sleep. But he didn’t understand. And always- always, he wanted to understand, he needed to. It cut through the fog of exhaustion and filled his blood with something like battle fire. 

He turned his head. Legolas’s eyes were closed, which in itself was a novelty. Gimli was by now quite familiar with the unsettling Elvish habit of sleeping with eyes wide open. It meant that Legolas’s eyes were closed now because he didn’t want to look at Gimli. 

The long, slender hand resting above Gimli’s heart was shaking slightly, like a leaf in a low wind. 

“Do not make me leave,” Legolas whispered, eyes still closed. “Please.”

“I have not yet succeeded in making you do anything,” Gimli pointed out, keeping his own voice to a low murmur, very conscious of Aragorn’s presence in the room. “Are- are you well?”

It took so long for the elf to answer that, looking at those closed eyelids, that still face, Gimli had time to feel an unpleasant flash of fear that no, something fared ill with his friend- 

“I feared for your life,” Legolas whispered. “In the battle, when we were separated. How long were you in the tunnels?”

“No more than two hours, I’d guess,” Gimli said. 

“It felt like an age of the world. Grant me this favor, Gimli.”

“Of course,” Gimli said, feeling stunned, and he rested his own hand over Legolas’s. He was not at home. He did not want to be, not really, not outside of moments of weakness, when he feared for his kinsfolk in the coming darkness, or when, more shamefully, he feared the strangeness of new things, of a road he could not see the end of, and an elf lying next to him in bed.

Fear seemed so often the companion of beauty and wonder, these days. 

I will get no sleep tonight, he thought, but Legolas’s breathing, light and perfectly steady, was oddly soporific, combined with the warmth of the fire and his deep exhaustion, and he drifted into a realm of dreams where the crystal caves beneath the Deep sang new unfamiliar song to him, and he held in his arms a geode that exploded into light.


End file.
